Relative equilibria of coupled underwater vehicles

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Date

2005-05-13

Author

Fomenko, Natalia Pavlovna

Type

Thesis

Degree Level

Masters

Abstract

The dynamics of a single underwater vehicle in an ideal irrotational fluid may be modeled by a Lagrangian system with configuration space the Euclidean group. If hydrodynamic coupling is ignored then two coupled vehicles may be modeled by the direct product of two single-vehicle systems. We consider this system in the case that the vehicles are coupled mechanically, with an ideal spherically symmetric joint, finding all of the relative equilibria. We demonstrate that there are relative equilibria in certain novel momentum-generator regimes identified by Patrick et.al. "Stability of Poisson equilibria and Hamiltonian relative equilibria by energy methods", Arch. Rational Mech. Anal., 174:301--344, 2004.